


creature-song

by untilwefallinlove



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1600s America AU, Demonic Possession, F/F, F/M, Gore, Gothic, Horror, M/M, Possession, Smut, Violence, Witches!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:21:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21524389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untilwefallinlove/pseuds/untilwefallinlove
Summary: You should turn away. But you let it happen, let it happen because some dark, most trapped part of you wants to. A piece of you that you have chained like an animal, a mongrel bitch, and tried to let die. It paces inside you now, hungry and waiting and ready.1600s America AU, Witch!AU, Possessed!Bucky, Gothic, Horror
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader, Steve Rogers/Reader, Wanda Maximoff/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 67





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys!! this is a whole mess and it got a little long so i'll split it into two chapters! but pls let me know what you think and thanks for reading!!

**1692, Massachusetts**

The day is filled with fog and smoke, a bleak greyness that shrouds all in it’s gloominess. The whole town seems washed out, everyone’s faces grey and slack. The crops are dying, growing brown and muted in color, fading away into death and nothingness. Your world seems covered in death recently, in the thick, heavy, inescapable blanket of it. 

There’s been another two murders. People torn apart, their bodies lie in the main road of town for all to see and gawk and pray over. 

Their blood is the brightest color you have seen in all of November. Saturated and sticky, sliding from them like the juice of berries in high summer, like the color the leaves had been before they’d all fallen away, like poppies and roses. Their skulls are bashed inward, as if made of clay, the sludge of them leaking through as flies buzz, buzz, buzz around them. As if they weren’t people once, but always food for insect, for the earth. Their limbs are twisted at strange, rag doll angles, and you think there was nothing but softness inside of them. No bone, there couldn’t have been with the way they lay there, all twisted and slack.

Their eyes are hollow. Open. Their mouths agape as bugs skitter and crawl and press outward in their feast of flesh. 

There’s moaning in the streets, howling cries of a mother or a sister or a wife. It’s horrific, if you dig into the pit of yourself, but it’s the fourth pair of bodies that have been found dead in recent weeks. It almost isn’t shocking anymore. 

Wanda presses closer to your side, your dearest friend, her body warm and soft. Flushed with color and light, the cold nipping at her cheeks, her nose. The wind lifts her auburn hair from her cheeks, her lashes fluttering in the breeze. She catches your hand with one of her own, tangling your fingers together. Her palm fits yours easily and swiftly, as if it’s where she belongs, as if it’s where you belong, too. 

“At least he’ll stop breathing down your neck about an engagement.” Wanda says quietly, her lips brushing the shell of your ear. She is warm and lulling in the cold autumn air that seems to be pushing through your wool dress, your scarf. Trying to worm it’s way beneath and make a home of your body. 

Perhaps you will never be warm again, if the cold decides to settle deep into your bones. 

“What?” You ask, blinking away from the bodies, from your murky thoughts. 

“Mr. Fowler.” Wanda murmurs, nodding to one of the bodies, “He always upset you, he always pressured you for an engagement.” 

You glance towards the bodies once more, find the shape of them, the faces so crudely misshapen now, but you finally catch the lines of his features. The dark hair, short and balding. As if you finally see the full picture. 

Oh. It’s Mr. Fowler, then. And Mr. Adams rotting beside him. 

“Yes,” You say quietly, weary of the spark in Wanda’s eyes, the glimmer that ensnares you, “I suppose so.” 

Wanda is all you have in recent years, another orphaned girl your village does not wish to worry or feed. So you worry and feed each other. You both claim to be trying to find husbands, trying to marry off into another household. Truthfully, though, neither of you have ever searched. You’re content to live together, secluded, removed from all of the prying eyes of your small, imposing world. You wish to go home with her now, in fact, want to curl up beside a fire and lean into her side until your eyes grow heavy and soft. You want her nimble fingers carding through your hair, her touch upon your neck-- 

A broad hand comes down upon your shoulder then and you jump, almost let out a yelp in surprise. You whirl around to face them, tilting your face up to find Steve Rogers looking down upon you. The sculpted lines of his face, the shocking blue eyes, the flush to his pale cheeks. He has always looked like a tragic hero to you; a Hercules, Perseus, noble and damned and fighting against all odds. 

Beside him, Bucky stands broad and pale faced. He won’t look at the bodies. There are deep, darkened blossoms beneath his eyes. It makes his already depthless and haunted eyes look worse, blackened out, charcoal blue. He crosses his arms across his great, wide chest; one of them the off-beat shine of metal, iron and leather creaking with the movement. Like a piece of armor, the leather strap reaching up to his shoulder, so that if he moves it, it may move the forearm of his appendage. The fingers lay motionless, cold and gleaming. Such an odd, strange invention to the rest of the town; they fear him because of it. But he has only ever helped you and Wanda, the way Steve has kept a watchful eye on the pair of you. 

If Steve looks like a Greek hero to you, you think Bucky looks like a Shakespearean one; damned because of his own choices, falling from grace; A Hamlet, Macbeth. 

“You shouldn’t watch this,” Steve murmurs to you two, already turning you from the gore and bloodshed with his warm hand, wishing the flesh of him would sink into you and flush you with heat, “Come on,” He then urges you gently, “Buck and I will help you with some morning chores.” 

He’s always been so giving, overly helpful, a twinge protective over the pair of you. Loyal, terribly so, as he stands beside Bucky, the pariah of town. 

And you let him guide you away, your fingers still woven tightly with Wanda’s, who still peaks over her shoulder at the seeping crimson of flesh and blood and body, as if they were petals of flowers to admire than corpses to rot. Her eyes glitter strangely when she turns back to you. 

Bucky follows like a shadow, head hung low. 

* * *

The crack,  _ snap  _ of wood being split into two is felt in your chest, the steady motion and sound falling into tune with every other beat of your heart. Bucky lifts the axe high with one arm, before bringing it down sharply upon the wood. It splits easily, a crack of lightning, of metal as it falls apart then. 

You feed the few hens that you and Wanda share, spreading feed onto the ground as they cluck and scurry around you. 

Steve helps Wanda fix the barn door, their figures blurry and grey in the fog and bleakness. 

You gaze at Bucky, the shadows that seem to cling to him. 

“You look tired, Mr. Barnes.” You speak up, tossing the rest of the feed to the chickens who scurry after it. You leave their pen, the gate creaking as you step nearer to him. The axe falls with strength and brutality, bursts the wood in half. 

“I haven’t been sleeping well.” He grunts, tossing the wood aside. He sets another piece upon the block, lifts his axe high. You can see the movement of muscle, the strength and cutting edge of them.

“No?” You ask, curling your fingers into your sleeves; you’re so cold still, stiff and frigid and snow hasn’t even touched the ground yet. You shiver, you think it will be an awful and long winter. “Why not?”

The axe smashes down upon the wood. 

He lets out a breath, shakes his head, the dark locks of his hair brushing his cheeks which are deeply flushed from the cold, from the exertion. He looks handsome, you think, with the peak of his chest beneath his long shirt. 

“I’ve been having strange dreams recently.” He then admits with the soft gruffness of his voice, eyes flickering to you.

You stand idly, know that idleness is a sin; you should be working. Working, busy hands can never sin. But you step towards him and your eyes watch the movement of his chest and torso, wonder what he looks like bare--

“What kind of dreams?” You ask, voice gone soft as you peer at him.

He straightens up a moment to his full height, now turning his eyes on  _ you,  _ “Curious little thing, aren’t you?” He half scolds you, and you feel small but suddenly bold. There’s a catch in his eyes, a gleaming not dissimilar to Wanda’s. It’s haunting, exhilarating, it makes you take another few steps closer as if drawn to him by an unnatural force. And then he answers, “They’re nightmares. Horrible dreams.”

“Of what?” 

His lips twist into a ghost of a smile and he shakes his head, “They’re not for a girl’s ears.” 

“I’m not a girl,” You counter, “I haven’t been for many moons.” 

His eyes flash to you, at the rather crude reference of the blood that spills from you monthly. He is not appalled, he is not shocked or scandalized, instead he peers deeper into you. As if he can see the twisting of your innards, all of the blood that might spill from you the way it had from Mr. Fowler. Would you paint November in the bright flare of red, too? Bring color to this washed out world. 

“I dream I slip from my body.” He says and his eyes grow glassy, far-off. You near him as he continues, “Or that I no longer control myself.” His breath stutters and you are fully ensnared in him now, “And I do monstrous deeds.” 

“Of what?” You breathe, looking up into his face, so haunted and hollow and frightened.

His lip trembles, and he exhales;

“I knew they would be dead this morning.” 

“Mr. Barnes,” You gasp and his eyes suddenly snap to you, wholly black and wide, and you are so startled that you try to lurch back. 

But he grabs you with speed and strength, and cold metal wraps around your wrist, around the fluttering, lively pulse beneath your thin skin. A moth’s wings pinned, a rabbit in a snare. When he speaks, it is strange and spellbinding, “I know you hated Mr. Fowler.” He says through a wall of his white, white teeth. 

You look down at the metal hand that seems to have come to life, yelp at the way the unnatural fingers tighten upon you, squeezing, as if they are his very limb. As if it is flesh and bone, a steel skeleton come to life. 

“I have peered into your soul, temptress, and I know you thought his blood was pretty.” He snarls low and guttural, his eyes digging into you like a curved, arching dagger. 

Wildly, your eyes fly over his face, now twisted into such misery and rage. You try to pull your wrist from his metal grasp, your face flushing with color from exertion. Your eyes glitter with sudden tears, the cold air pricking at them. “Mr. Barnes--” You gasp, voice catching, breath curling into the air between you two. 

All he does is pull you forward, jerking you into the strong expanse of his chest as he lifts your wrist. “I know your thoughts are rotting.” He rumbles, and the sound vibrates through him and down into the marrow of your bones “You want more than this. Your heart longs for what it shouldn’t.” 

“Bucky, you’re hurting me.” You whimper, trying to twist and squirm but it's useless against the strength of him.

“Am I?” He hisses, voice like insects swarming, “I know what you want, little one.” He then croons so lowly that it slithers down into you like a serpent, coils into the darkest, most wretched parts of you. Sinks down into your core to unfurl in a sudden burst of heat--

And with the way he looks at you; as if you are to be devoured, as if you are to be torn apart by him or worshipped on an unholy altar. Your heart beats an unsteady, thunderous rhythm in the cavity of your chest. 

It echoes inside of you, demanding of you something you don’t know how to feed. 

His body is warm against yours, unnaturally so, save for the frigid hand constricting around the delicate skin of your wrist. You think he’ll bruise you, you think he’ll mark you for all to see and you’ll carry his brand. His eyes are as dark as a starless sky, blown out black as coal, as black as the he goat in the barn, as the smoke of hellfire.

“Bucky!” Steve shouts suddenly, and the two of you lurch away as if something has forced you apart. You cradle your wrist, try to rub the ache away, your heart still ricocheting around inside of you, as if it very well might escape entirely. 

Bucky blinks in horror, his eyes returning to the gentle midnight blue that you know so dearly. He stumbles back, his metal arm returning inanimate by his side. If it weren’t for the frightened, wild look in his face, you’d think it would’ve never happened at all.

“I need your help for a moment!” Steve yells, voice echoing. 

A flock of black birds burst into the shapeless, endless, grey sky at the loud noise. You jump at their sudden explosion of flight. They squawk and screech, wings flapping like your heart beating. 

Whatever had filled Bucky has fled now and his eyes are clear and shining, his cheeks flushed again, no unnatural darkness tracing the edges of his features. You watch him warily, your mind suddenly feverish with what he’d said to you, with the searing touch that now seems to scorch your skin. 

_ I knew they would be dead this morning.  _

You should tell someone; Steve, Wanda, a minister. You should flee. 

But all you say is, “Go,” And you nod your head towards Steve and Wanda, “I will light a fire to warm you after.” 

He looks at you warily, as if he might apologize or thank you or question you; there’s such confusion in his eyes. He is lost, swimming in that black sea.  _ What did I do?  _ He asks silently, pleads with you,  _ what have I done?  _

You look away, unwilling to answer. He moves on cautiously, towards Steve and Wanda in the distance. You begin to make a fire as if all is normal, and all you can think about is how you are no longer shivering with cold. 

As if an ember has sparked, been cradled to a small flame in the cavernous depths of your soul. 

* * *

Some days later, Wanda wakes you at an odd hour of the night, moonlight spilling in through the small window of your shared bedroom. It fills the room with reaching shadows and cutting, silver light. You’d been sleeping soundly, curled onto your side when you are roused by small, seeking hands. 

You turn, eyes fluttering, a blurry shape in front of you. You make out Wanda’s impish features, the shadow of her slender figure. And her eyes--

_ Oh, her eyes.  _

They’re glowing strangely, fever bright and glittering like rubies in the night. She sinks upon you, her body sliding so she straddles your hips, laying herself along you. You can feel the soft lines of her; her chest to yours, the heat of her nose and lips upon your neck and shoulder. 

“Wanda,” You exhale, twisting, a little confused. Her fingertips are hot, like little embers, dancing along bare skin. 

“Hush, my heart.” She shushes, “My little shrike.” She cooes, “My moon and stars.” Her nose and lips brush your cheek, her searching hands dipping underneath the thin, cotton nightgown that wraps around your body. 

“Wanda,” You gasp as her lips settle into a kiss upon the flamed skin of your cheek. “What are you doing?” 

She pulls back so that you may see her in all her nightshade glory, her hair sliding along her bare shoulders, her nightgown down, spilling around her arms so the tops of her breasts are revealed. She looks almost wild-eyed, strange and beautiful and seductive in the night. Her eyes swim before you, blood red and glittering and enchanting. There’s something heady and intoxicating about her, something you want to taste, that you want to sink into and drown in. 

“Giving you what you want,” She says on a simple sigh, just as her fingers find the curve of your breast, little dancing flames that have you shutter and arch. She tilts her head with wide, bright eyes; there’s a sweet, coy smile playing at her lips, her lashes fluttering like moth’s wings, as she asks too innocently, her voice gone high and soft and beguiling;

“Isn’t this what you want, little one?” 

Her clever fingers find the peak, make you squirm, make heat flood through you. She draws back the covers with her other hand to find your bare leg, your bare thigh, sliding up to your bare--

“Wanda!” You jolt, suddenly shy, trying to sit up but she forces you down. 

She grins wickedly, “Don’t hide from me.” And her nimble fingers stroke between your legs where you’ve become slippery and warm and silky. You feel flushed and heady, hypnotized by her. She sighs against you, settles deeper into your body like a corpse sinking into a grave, pushing her finger inside to make you gasp aloud. To claim you, to touch you in a way that no hand has ever touched before. 

“This isn’t new to you, though, is it?” She breathes, almost hisses, “I know because I hear you some nights.” Her fingers twist and a moan tumbles out of your lips, and she laughs, bright and warm, “Just like that, dearest.” 

You squirm, and slowly lose your inhibitions with every push and pull of her fingers, every glide of her. Had you not dreamed of this? Had you not wondered with a sinful mind what it might be like to feel her like this, to taste and be tasted by her? Had you not wondered what heaven or hell might have felt like? She’s damnation, sweet salvation; something so visceral and entangled within the pits of you, something profound and holy. 

The world falls away so that it is only you two and the moon, the pleasure she gives and torments you with. The town slips away, the rules, the Bible, your Holy God all dissipates like fog until you are only born of this warmth and vicious sweetness. She keeps you teetering on an edge, cruel mistress of night that she is. She trembles with you on a new beginning, baptized between your thighs, between hers. She lets you touch and explore the softness of her body with curious and hungry hands, no longer idle. 

She brands you with lips and teeth and tongue, makes you wild and insatiable. Her fingers wrap around your tender throat as she guides you towards another sharp and jagged edge. 

Her cheeks glow against yours, a face of fire and heat, her breaths tumultuous and warm against your shoulder. “You’re mine,” She seems to half-sob, her little hand tightening upon your throat as if to claim you, “ _ Mine. _ I live in you, and you have possessed me so thoroughly I think I could die.” 

A broken moan from you, a gasp. 

“Say it,” She then hisses through her teeth, “Say you’re mine.” 

You whimper, push your hips into her hands as if she has bewitched you, taken hold of your very soul. The words fall from your kiss stung and abused lips, eager and knowing it to be true, “I’m yours, Wanda,  _ I’m yours--”  _

And then she claims you with lips, with body and soul, forces you into oblivion. She laughs with delight against your mouth, drinks up your cries and buries herself into the crooks and corners of your body. Of your very being. 

She lays with you beneath the moonlight, a new strange power surges through her, a brightness that cannot be dimmed. You think she might be a devil, a witch, a creature of the night with her lullaby voice and twilight kiss. You think she is damned and maybe you are, too.

You think she has claimed you and, as you tighten yourself around her body, your nails digging into her soft flesh, you think that you have claimed her, too. 

* * *

Wanda has never looked brighter, more flushed with life and vitality. She is radiant, even in all the greyness of devouring and lonesome autumn, when winter is on it’s tails. The town is thoroughly terrified and sick with horror as another two bodies arise. They’re just as the others, a bright mess of crimson and maroon and sludge. 

Steve and Bucky stay near you and Wanda, watch over you both closely. Bucky is changed, too, something in him has been bent and broken and fractured. You think he’s bleeding internally, you think there is something in him that needs to be taken out. 

Or maybe it doesn’t. His smiles are more hooked, shadowed, strange and tempting. You wonder what his teeth would feel like against your neck-- if he would taste like Wanda, if he’d touch you like her, too. 

You’ve never touched a man before. You’ve never been touched by one, either. 

Wanda and Bucky are strange together, you think. And you grow jealous when you see her fluttering her lashes at him and cooing. You don’t know who you’re more jealous of, which one of them you want to claw and tear apart with viciousness, with love and heat and something demented. 

Steve notices this new change, too, and he tries to console you when you pout. You think he would make a good husband if a husband was something you were interested in. So valiant and golden, too polished for your unclean hands. 

But husbands are so base, so simple. Wanda has opened your mind to something higher, something more enchanting and powerful. 

And in the middle of the nights, when it is only you and her, she promises to give you more. She promises to guide you further into such wonder that she has discovered. Then she devours you and makes you tremble and shake with her might and love. 

She grows stronger with each day; odd happenings following her. She grows angry and a glass may shatter. A neighbor who glares at you suddenly loses two of his cows. Someone calls Bucky an abomination and suddenly they are struck ill. 

When she returns to you, while you still pout with Steve, still mad over her attention to Bucky, she smiles brightly. She wraps her arms around your shoulders and kisses your cheek, “Tonight is the night, my stars.” And then she nuzzles at your jaw, amorous and warm, “Tonight is the night that I give you all the power I have been harboring.” 

She takes your hands in hers, kisses the inside of your wrist, “Tonight you become like me, in eternal darkness.” 

Her teeth nick your wrist playfully and she looks at you with burning, hooded eyes. You think if she could, she’d lay you out on the dirt and take you right there. Hitch up your skirts and grind her hips against yours until you were both desperate and wild for release. 

But Steve is there, and Bucky, too. 

You wish she would, still. 

She laughs and saunters away as if she knows your thoughts. The wind howls and bays, as if it knows, too. 

* * *

She dresses you that night in a thin, white gown. You whine that you’ll freeze to death, but she shushes you with burning lips. She promises not, promises that you will never feel cold again after tonight. 

She leads you barefoot and shivering out to the forest by the dim, flickering light of a candle. It burns in her hand, wax dripping and sliding the way honey does in the summer. You long for summer suddenly, for the warmth and sea of green. The candle casts little, dancing shadows that seem to lurk and follow you both.

She leads you by hand, guides you into the thick of the forest where the wolves howl and the foxes yip and the coyotes yowl. The owl cooes, eyes peering at you in the darkness. You are lead to a clearing, and the small, fluttering candle that you’ve used to navigate illuminates the shape of a man.

Large and muscled, broad shouldered and lonesome in the woods. 

“Don’t be scared,” Wanda cooes, “Go to him.” 

Warily, you ease past her, past the flickering, gold light of the candle. And even in the darkness, you recognize his face, the unnatural metal arm--

Bucky stands bare from the waist up and you flush at his nudity, at the shape of a man. Hadn’t you wondered about his chest beneath his clothes? About his abdomen? Your eyes flicker lower and you blink, quickly avert your eyes as your blush grows deeper. His body is far different than Wanda’s. 

“Mr. Barnes,” You breathe, and Wanda comes to your side, lifting the candle up to illuminate his handsome and shadowed face. 

His eyes are purely black, inky, the way they’d been that day not so long ago, when he’d seized you so tightly. He looks different, cutting and jagged. 

“Somewhat.” Wanda answers you with a smile. “He is changed, though.” 

“Possessed,” You gasp, the thought striking you deeply and suddenly. Like a blow to your chest, you realize you gaze upon a demon. 

His eyes snap to you,“Hello, temptress.” He says in a voice that is his and not his all at once. 

“Are you afraid?” Wanda purrs and you shudder at her voice, at the cold that pricks your skin, at the hungry, hollow look in Bucky’s face. The forest seems alive and breathing, shuddering with you, terrified and expectant of what it is to transpire. 

The moon is full, hanging and heavy and open mouthed in a horrified scream against the sea of blackness. 

“Should I be?” You ask quietly, a whisper of the wind, and Wanda’s eyes glitter excitedly. Her eyes flash red, warming and shimmering like embers. 

Wanda sets the candle aside, comes to your back. She slides her fingers beneath your nightgown, begins to ease it down past your shoulders. You should protest, you should force her to stop, shield yourself from the gaze of the man in front of you. From the demon in front of you. But you let it happen, let it happen because some dark, most trapped part of you wants to. A piece of you that you have chained like an animal, a mongrel bitch, and tried to let die. It paces inside you now, hungry and waiting and ready. 

It runs its teeth along the tender, pink inner flesh of you. It’s creature-song sings to you now, a siren to surrender to.

So you stand in the darkness, the guttering flame of the candle upon you, bare and shivering in front of evil.

And evil lies you on the cold, unforgiving ground. Wanda is there beside you, stroking your face and your hair with warm, gentle fingers. More gentle than she has ever been with you, as if she can hear the fearful, pounding of your heart caught between your shuddering ribs. You’re suddenly new to touch, virginal and trembling, a new flower to be opened.

The weight of Bucky settles upon you, his body unnaturally warm and burning, his broad shoulders wide upon you. His lips and nose nuzzle your jaw, your neck, also with surprising care. You shift your legs, open them tentatively to fit his waist in the cradle of your hips and—

You can feel him there, the hard line of him and you flush, suddenly squeak. 

“Don’t be afraid, little one.” He rumbles, and his voice sounds clearer, as if the demon doesn’t speak for him any longer, but only the midnight timber of Bucky’s sweet voice. He lifts his head and only the slate, blue eyes of him gaze down at you. “I’ll be gentle,” He promises, rubbing his bearded cheek to yours; so rough compared to Wanda’s smooth one. 

“I know this is what you wanted.” Wanda says softly, her lips at your ear, tucking your hair from your face. “I know how you gaze at him.” 

The first touch of Bucky’s hands are rough and make you jolt; one calloused and scarred and another cold and metal. They slide along the dips and curves of you, firm and gentle. You squirm slightly, base and animal upon the ground. 

“I’ll make you mine,” He murmurs, nosing at your neck, his teeth skimming lightly there. “My bride of darkness, queen of beasts.” His voice dips now into that lowly, snaking one of a demon, “I’ve been waiting for you for so long, my love.” 

His hips roll, a push against yours that have you clinging to his large frame. He is so much bigger than what you know, so overpowering. Wanda ravishes you but she is slight and nimble. You make a noise of surprise, a whimper, a squeak. 

“Relax,” He coos darkly, his flesh hand sliding up your bare legs. “You’re hurting here, aren’t you? Aching in the pit of you.” And his warm, rough fingers slide against you; revealing that, despite your fear, you’ve become molten and slick. You can feel his hooked grin, “Oh, little queen, and how you’ve longed for me, too.” 

He strokes until you are pliant beneath him, urging you on, Wanda pressing kisses to your cheeks and neck, collar bones and shoulders. You shudder beneath him, let something inside of you curl and coil, like a serpent, like the tightening of a rope, pulled to its full length, creaking and swaying as everything grows that much tighter. 

“You were born for me,” Bucky’s rumbling voice is in your ears, against your throat laid bare for him, his voice seems to echo in the darkest pieces of your mind and heart. “Born for this.” He sighs, leaning heavier into you before he suddenly pushes down the length of your body.

He settles between your legs, spreading them wide with his shoulders. Pearl moonlight, silver and opal fall across his features like pale silk that you have only ever dreamed about. In this light, he could’ve been an angel, a creature made of softness and delicacies, his black eyes turning up to find you and stuttering back into lovely blue. 

He bows his head like you could be holy, like you are to be prayed to. His hair tickles the bare skin of your thighs, his fingers prodding gently and then his mouth presses to where you’re most sensitive. 

You arch like a bow off the ground at the first touch and Wanda is there to comfort you. She eases you up slightly, let’s your back lay against the soft warmth of her chest and strokes your face and neck, down to your breasts. 

She grasps your hands when you pull and twist at him so that you lay helpless in her arms, helpless to the too-hot glide of his mouth against you. The forest is silent save for your cries, you are the wolf that howls, the crying fox, the whining coyote. You let go, let them consume you until you don’t recognize yourself. Until your nails feel sharp and your heart feels so full it could burst from all the aching. 

“Please,” You whimper, your hips pushing towards his lips in desperation, “Please, I can’t take this any longer!”

He laughs darkly against the slick pink flesh of you, “Didn’t their God teach you patience, darkling?” 

And he waits until you’re nothing but an animal for him, until your head is spinning and there are tears streaming down your heated cheeks. Not until you dig nails into Wanda’s hands so deeply that you have broken skin and she hisses through her teeth. He gives you no release, cruel as he is, and eventually slides up along your body once more. 

He grasps Wanda by the back of the neck and pulls her sharply to his shining lips. She moans, the sound going straight down into the depths of you. 

“My loyal servant,” He tells her, his eyes once more black as a raven, shining under the flash of silver moonshine. “You brought her to me.” He murmurs reverently and she looks up at him adoringly, her wide eyes that flare deeply red and maroon are glittering like gemstones in a cave.

“Make her ours.” Wanda then breathes, and he smiles all sharp and gutting. 

He grasps your hips with metal and flesh, draws them closer and slides you towards him. Your head falls to Wanda’s abdomen, her lap. Her fingers brush your wet cheeks and you mewl, twist into her touch. He kneels before you, worshiping, and opens his trousers. 

You don’t have time to think because you can feel him between your legs now. He brushes the hard length of him along where you’re most sensitive and desperate. You feel empty suddenly, knowing that he will fill you, and suddenly tentative. 

He is large and burning and the crown of him dips inside of where no man has been. He exhales harshly, eyes seeped in black, so depthless and dark that it swallows the moon light. The first slow, heavy push of him makes you cry out.

“I-I can’t—“ You half beg, feel the stretch and breach of him deep inside of you, the pressure and heat that terrifies you. 

“Oh, you will,” He almost growls, as if you’re undoing him. His eyes are fixed to where he eases in deeper, slides slowly and he groans, broken and in the back of his throat. “You will, even if you’re so small.” 

Another slow push and then he sinks into you entirely, sinks down so that he covers you in all his strength. His breaths are ragged; he is unwoven by you, falling apart as he stretches you open.

You give another cry, hold incredibly still beneath him as the pressure mounts. You feel as if you’re splintering, broken open like ripe fruit, bursting forth with a new heat. Your hand squabbles over the muscles of his back before sinking into his skin with nails. 

You become overwhelmed, drag your nails deep into his skin to mark him, to urge him on or force him out, you can’t tell. You bare your teeth, let out a broken moan, a half-growl against the vein of his neck. You realize your own vulnerability, belly-up and soft to him, open and waiting. 

Wanda soothes you when he begins to move in you, traces her fingertips over your swollen lips, sinks inside the sweetness of your mouth and lets you suckle and kiss and bite. There’s a fever inside you, tormenting your insides. You whimper, the sound pulling at Bucky, and when he looks back down at you, his eyes burst back into blue. The demon seems to slink away, or Bucky has regained control, again. 

You almost expect him to jolt away again, to flush with fear but—

“Oh,” He gasps instead, unraveled man, fallen from grace. He gathers you in his arms, pulls you closer and tucks you into him, as if he could pull you beneath his skin and bury you behind the strong bones of his ribs. He holds fast to you, suddenly lifts you into his lap, into his arms. “Oh, pretty girl.” He murmurs as he moves you slowly over him, foggy and heady with you. 

Your world begins to blur. You don’t know where the demon ends and Bucky begins. You don’t think you care, when all of that pain and burning gives way to a hedonistic pleasure. You move over him on your own, can feel the slickness of you, you can feel the deep seated ache you need to ease. 

The teetering edge, the right and creeping rope, ready to snap. The leash on the beast inside of you begins to splinter. 

Wanda’s at your back then, lips at your neck, brushing your ear. “Repeat after me,” She murmurs, voice a lulling warmth that sinks into your marrow. 

_ “Et dabo tibi animam meam,”  _ She murmurs, her voice gaining a haunting, otherworldly inflection, as if other voices buzz alongside hers. 

So you repeat with a thick, honeyed tongue the Latin words that seems to simmer and etch themselves into you. You feel the power surge in her, in him, in you; a tether woven tightly between you three. His thrusts become rougher, his eyes flooding with crude black once more. 

_ “Nunc, et in perpetuum magis.” _ Wanda finishes in your ear, a possessive hand curled around the bones of your waist, along the curve of your breast. 

The words fall from your mouth as easily as if you’ve known them your entire, unforgiving life. And then there is a pull,  _ snap  _ of your heartstrings. The howling mongrel in you bursts loose, the heat and life and viciousness unfurls from within. You feel as if you’re being torn apart, as if another creature is clawing its way out of your core, your soft stomach and aching chest. 

The demon groans, spills inside of you; his seed so hot that you feel it may burn you. As if it burns its way through you, into your womb and heart and being. 

“You’re mine now,” The demon and Bucky say, rough hand cradling your cheek. _ “Semper magis.” _ He hushes against your lips and seals it with a claiming, damned kiss.

Then he sinks talons into your soul, teeth into your bottom lip and your heart, locks his essence tight to yours and throws away the ancient, heavy key. 


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter to this little one-shot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!! come say hi to me on tumblr @until-we-fall-in-love

You are born anew, suddenly coltish on newly powerful legs. You are flushed with color, your hair shining and eyes that can simmer into ember orange and serpent yellow. You are different from Wanda; she reveres you with new respect in equal measures that she treats you like a new, bratty princess that needs to be guided and taught and scolded. 

She says she serves you, becomes so protective that you can hardly leave her sight. If anyone dares utter your name with anything but respect, they are falling ill with oozing boils and welts. She is merciless, possessive. She makes your head spin. She teaches you the ways of the witch, forces your chin up higher and calls you Dark One, Hidden One, Princess of Night, Queen of Beasts. 

You do not know when the demon speaks for Bucky or when Bucky speaks for the demon. He becomes even more protective, aggravated. You feel powerful, feel free and wild and savage. 

You’re no longer freezing and shivering.

You crawl into Bucky’s lap and sink down upon him, even when he is clear-eyed and gentler with you. You let him take you on your stomach like a snake when his eyes are blackened with the demon. He becomes yours. You become his.

Wanda teaches you magic, teaches you around a flickering flame before she lays you out and makes you hers, too. 

More bodies appear, dripping in velvet red and a lovely shade of pink. You grow apathetic. Wanda is cursing too many.

Rumors spread like wildfire. It’s easy to target the pariahs of the village, even more so when you three have become the monsters they’ve always wanted you to be. But at least you claim it now, at least it is yours and you love it, you love your power and the rabid wolf in you that has been released in all it’s feral glory. 

Wanda is accused of witchcraft, followed quickly by you. Your neighbors gawk and stare and whisper behind their ugly hands that you wish to see crushed with stone or cut cleanly off. How many times can you break a finger bone? 

But you and Wanda turn wide, girlish eyes on them. You pretend to be sweet, huddle together the way they think females should cower. 

Steve defends you both, scolds them for daring to think so. Your golden boy, your lion-hearted man.if he notices the change in you, he cannot speak it loud, perhaps for fear of making it true. 

So good, so gracious and kind. A Godly man, if it weren’t for the bent part of him. You can feel it now, in his thoughts that you worm into. In the way his eyes linger on Bucky’s form. On yours and Wanda’s. 

You don’t know how to tell him that there is something twisted inside him, too, that you can’t wait to devour him. So you lick your lips as lioness, she wolf, sharp-toothed fox, and wait for him to come to you.

* * *

The days are brief; darkness cradles the world at a tender hour. You and Wanda thrive in it, wander out to the woods with a candle, and roll around upon the forest floor together. She strips you bare, plays too close to the edge of town because she likes the thrill of being caught. You laugh and moan and grab at each other, sink teeth into vulnerable skin and shake and shiver like the final leaves upon the spindly, reaching trees. 

And from the edges, someone watches. Eyes, impossibly blue and shining in milky starlight.

Steve crouches low, hiding in the shadows like some perverse and unsettled man. He shouldn’t, but he follows you and Wanda out into the darkness. He suspects something, in the pit of his stomach, suspects something awful and he follows in hopes of being proved wrong. He hopes it’s innocent. So he watches with wide eyes and a trembling heart as you both lose your wool dresses and shawls and underthings. He shouldn’t look, God, oh God, he knows he shouldn’t watch this—

But something inside him begs him to stay. His heart is in his throat, palms suddenly clammy and cold. He can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. The dim candlelight is made into a small bonfire and your bare, twisting bodies are illuminated for him. 

He watches as your lips fall down to Wanda’s chest, makes her laughs turns into gasps as she pulls at your hair that unravels over your shoulders and back. Wanda forces you down, sinks into your lap and hooks a leg of yours over hers, fits you two together by your cores until both your hips move in tandem.

He watches you kiss the way lovers do, with a vicious tenderness, with a searing sort of love. He’s jealous, he realizes stupidly, unable to even breathe as he watches you both raptly.

His fingers dig into the bark of a tree, scratching the way you do at Wanda’s shoulders. He swallows thickly at the noises you make, knows this is sin. Knows this is damnation. 

He should forsake you both. He should never look upon either of you again and go back home to say a thousand burning prayers.

But he’s shaking by the time you’re both finished, his cheeks flushed and eyes shining. He is hungry, he realizes, near desperate. 

You’re witches, he thinks, you’re something evil and corrupted and twisted. He should tell a minister, he should try to make you both repent on bent knees and your eyes cast downward, the fan of your lashes against your warm and soft cheeks—

When he finally tears himself away with a half growl of frustration, his trousers are constricting, too tight and damning evidence. He aches in the most inner parts of him.

You and Wanda giggle, your laughs carrying on the twisting, cold wind that pushes at Steve as he storms away. As if you both know how he longs, as if the wind knows, too. 

* * *

Your nights are fever dreams of hands and warm, slick mouths. Fingers between lips and legs, hands wrapped tight around your throat, your breasts, your legs. Bathed in blood or arousal or mercury moonlight. You lose count of the bodies as you grow stronger each day, able to move things with your mind. Or curse and strike someone down. You float through daylight, warm even as snow begins to fall and everyone and everything withers away into death.

You and Wanda are accused of witchcraft. They tear through the village looking for you two and when they find you both, Wanda pushes you behind her, bares her teeth and growls into the cold air so it curls upwards like smoke, like a dragon. 

They near with their sludge faces and greedy, grabbing hands. They curse you as witches and suddenly seize you both with their frigid fingers that pull and prod at your soft skin. 

“Don’t touch her!” Wanda snarls like a wild thing and you latch tight to her wrist, her hand, before you are being pulled away.

Others grab at Wanda and they try to separate you two. Wanda thrashes, her eyes flooding with red when you shriek in pain as others start twisting your arms, trying to wrench you away from her. It feels as if you’re being torn apart, stitching to be ripped and unwoven. You feel suddenly feral, twisting and turning to try and slip free.

“Let her go!” Wanda says again and there is a ringing to her voice, a power that surges. Her nails dig into your skin and you hold as tightly as you can as arms wrap around your middle and lift you clear off the ground. They pull at you, vicious and unforgiving.

You fight with all you have, yell and snarl, throw yourself towards Wanda but they tear you both apart kicking and screaming.

You don’t realize when you start sobbing through clenched teeth, but you do. As if they’re torturing or killing you, as if they’ve ripped out your heart. They drag you through the streets like an animal and you want to kill them all, you want to paint everything in their blood. You want to watch Bucky dismember them, you want to dance on their grave and pin Wanda to the cold stone to feel her body against yours.

The men tear at your clothes because they can, because they’re greedy and you scream. Wanda hears you, and there is a sudden pulse from her, a shriek, before some of the men around her are thrown backwards from her. She fights harder, but is overtaken again. 

They haul you both to a cold and darkened prison. They throw you in separate cages, though connected. Wanda and you push against the bars to touch and speak with each other. She strokes your wet cheeks, tries to soothe you. 

“I won’t let them near you,” She murmurs, “I won't let them touch you again. I’ll kill them before I let them.” She tells you with heat, her red eyes shining with tears as she holds your face through the hateful, metal bars that are rusted and rough. 

When they return, they demand to check you both for devil’s marks, witch’s marks. One man nears you with outstretched hands and Wanda seethes, hisses through her teeth and jerks her head slightly to the left—

The man’s neck snaps in the same direction, cracks sickly, and he falls dead at your feet. You can sense his soul now departing. You grow chilled, the veil between your world and the next shimmering before your eyes. 

You skitter back and away, into Wanda’s hands and arms as she hushes you. Her nose drips scarlet blood now, eyes fever bright in the darkness. The men stare in fear and repulsion, horror in their faces and you stare back at them with the same repulsion and terror. 

They shouldn’t touch you, shouldn’t grab at you. Who are they to try and twist you and cage you both? All they’d done was cage you— your whole, smothered life. All they’d done was made you hate who you are and what you’d become or hadn’t become. They’d tried to make you grey and slack faced and cold and unfeeling. They tried to make you housewife and child of God and mother of many sons.

Your minister says you were born in sin.

So what was the point, then? You had railed, had searched and begged and prayed for answers and received none. _Be quiet,_ they’d wanted, _be silent and still and look beautiful and serene but not so beautiful that you should tempt the men_ _and you—_

You hadn’t breathed until Wanda had shown you the ways of a new life. You’d been so free with her, with Bucky. With Steve.

“We will be free once more.” Wanda promises in your ear and it slithers down between your shoulder blades and settles in the notches of your spine as you peer at the men in the darkness with their open, grasping hands. 

* * *

A trial is had. 

They want to hang you both for your crimes. 

Steve defends you, swears as witness and under God that he’s only ever seen you both be angels. And if there has been discretion, he is certain your souls can be saved.

_ Why are they so close? It’s unnatural, is it not?  _

Not for two orphans, Steve says, not for two girls who only have each other.

_ People say that Miss Maximoff has killed with a look because someone touched the other. _

Impossible, Steve counters. She is frightened, he presses, she is protective. They are all each other has.

_ Shouldn’t they have found husbands by now?  _

They’ve no mother to guide them. Take pity on them, he says, they are lost and searching.

Does our scripture not say to take in the weary and lost? Steve cries, face honest, as he says;

They have done no wrong. 

He lies through his teeth for you both, the twisted part of him growing like a gnarled tree root, spreading deep into him. 

And when he visits your cells, you rush towards the bars to touch him, to thank him. 

Wanda is there, too, trying to press through the bars to you and him. 

“Oh, Steve,” You whisper, your fingers reaching through the bars to touch his face, his pale hair. You brush over his cheeks as he gazes at you.

“You shouldn’t defend us.” You tell him, “They’ll hang you, too, if you’re not careful.”

“I won’t let them hang you.” Steve says as if he could move mountains and  _ there  _ is your Greek hero; going up against immeasurable odds. “You won’t.” He promises like Wanda, “I’ll set you free.”

The words are pressed into your jaw, just below your ear. You become aware of all that he’s willing to do for you both and you pull back to stare at him slightly, at all of him.

“Do not lie the way you did to the jury and the judge.” You hiss to him, nails skimming his face now.

“I-I didn’t—“

“I know you saw us in the woods that day.” You tell him lowly, your voice coaxing and soft and breathy. “I know you saw us sin.” You tell him as your own eyes suddenly shimmer into the orange of a liquid sunset.

Steve swallows harshly, cheeks aflame.

You grab at the back of his neck, pulling him close so that your lips brush his between the jagged bars. 

“I know that you liked watching. And that you love me and Wanda and Bucky too much to be scared.” You nudge your nose to his cheek and sigh as if you are in love, “You’re so loyal, Steve.”

He stammers, “W-what does Bucky—“

But he knows the answer and you kiss him lightly upon the lips before he departs.

Your sweet sighs and coaxing fingers have him singing with heat, knowing that no matter how he tried, he wouldn’t have wanted it to be any other way than this. Sin or not, you awaken something inside his chest, a bird finally taking flight and he won’t lose that. He can’t. Just like he can’t lose Bucky or Wanda, either. 

_ Bring all that you have,  _ he thinks of the church and the minister and the town,  _ and I will plant myself like a tree between them, and stand there forever more.  _

Little does he know, they will thoroughly test that; they’ll bring axes and fire and sing and dance with ugly faces and feet when he goes up as a pyre for you and Wanda to be staked upon.

* * *

The room smells of sick when Steve enters; it is damp and dark and sweltering for November. Bucky twists in the sheets of bed, a fire roaring and snapping gently in the fireplace. He is sweaty and shining and red in the face. He looks pale, though, stricken and weak and the heavy bags beneath his eyes seem as if they’ve gained even more weight. 

Bucky grew ill early into the morning and has only gotten worse since. He’s thrown up black bile again, Steve can see it in the bucket beside his thin, lumpy bed. 

Bucky’s eyes are shining when they fall on Steve and he reaches out to him like he is a boy again, sick and in bed and begging for his mother. Steve goes to sit beside him, 

“There’s something horrible in me, Steve.” Bucky rasps, “I’m trying to get it out. You have to help me.” 

Steve shakes his head, places his palm upon Bucky’s forehead, “It’s just a fever.” He says dismissively and Bucky grabs his wrist, holds his hand to his clammy and hot face. He presses his forehead into Steve’s palm, squeezes his eyes shut.

“Steve,” He says, low and desperate, his voice ragged, “Steve, it’s not just a fever.” 

And then Bucky’s body seizes, his eyes rolling into the back of his head as he goes straight and tight as an arrow, ready to be shot. Steve’s eyes widen, concern flooding him as Bucky’s body seizes sharply.

“Bucky,” He hisses, just as Bucky begins shaking violently, body twisting. Steve tries to hold him still, but his tremors grow too strong, too brutal and hysterical. “Buck!”

Steve grapples for his shoulders, to hold him down hard against the bed, leaning down and using all his strength and weight to try and pin him down. He fears he’ll hurt himself, fears the worst—

Bucky’s hand- the false, metal one- shoots out to grab Steve around the back of his neck and when his eyes snap open, they are blazing, coal black. 

Black as night. A starless sky.

Steve’s heart jumps as if it might leap from the nest between his ribs. 

“Oh, Stevie,” He says in a higher, breathy voice, “You’re so loyal, Steve.” He says in the same way that you had and Steve tries to lurch away, suddenly shocked and frightened.

But Bucky holds tighter, unnatural strength in that metal limb that keeps Steve from bolting to the other side of the room. Steve’s breaths grow ragged, his chest rising and falling quickly, fluttering in a way that he is not familiar with. 

“You lied for them in front of the court. Swore to your God that you’d never seen them sin.” Bucky says in a slithering, inky voice. It reverberates inside of Steve’s mind, sinks down his throat and into his chest and core—

“But you saw them.” He says slowly, “You saw the way they touched and rolled around on the ground like animals in heat.”

Steve is shaking, breathing hard through his nose.

“And you liked it,” Bucky growls, his voice infinite and pushing at him, “You thought about it. You think of their naked bodies—“

“Bucky—“ Steve tries to stop him, before his heart falls out through his stomach.

“Not quite,” the black-eyed creature hums lowly, twisting slightly beneath Steve’s hands so that their chests may touch. “But I am a catalyst for his desires. I set him free. I set them free.” He tilts his head at an odd angle, a serpent about to strike, “And I can set you free, too.”

“No.” Steve tries to jerk away again but the grip on him is bruising, inhuman. 

He leans towards him, “I know how you look at him.” He hisses through teeth that seem sharper, too close to his vulnerable neck, “I know how he looks at you.” 

“I don’t—“

He jerks Steve closer, so their lips almost brush. “Don’t deny yourself,” He breathes and this time, it seems like Bucky, the voice rough and soft and pulling at tendons in Steve’s soul. “You can have him. And them.” And Bucky finally releases him, strokes the back of his neck like a lover, twists his hands in the blond of his hair.

Steve longs to relax into it, to settle into Bucky’s bones. But—

Bucky sags against the bed, eyes rolling again, until they flutter back into the blue that Steve knows in the depths of his person. Like the blue of early evening, of stone and winter.

Steve shifts off of him, hands going to his face, his neck, “Are you okay?”

Bucky pales, suddenly twists out of Steve’s grasp and spews black blood and bile into the bucket beside the bed. He wretches, whole body shuddering and seizing. 

And Steve runs his broad palm along his flank, brushes hair from his face the way a parent would, the way a lover would.

When he’s finished spilling his guts and blood into the bucket- black rust and gore, he wipes his mouth, turns back into the bed and tries to hide from Steve.

“You’re right, it’s not just a fever.” Steve says dryly and allows the room to fall into stiff, unforgiving silence. 

After a moment, after the silence becomes overbearing for him, a weight upon his shoulders and throat, as if it wants him to feel the weight of his sins, Bucky speaks;

“I did horrible things.” 

His voice is shredded and somber as he waits for Steve, so golden and bright and good, to leave him in horror.

“It wasn’t you.” Steve hushes, touches his neck.

Bucky goes still as stone.

“Yes, it was.” Bucky squeezes out, “I was present. I let Wanda lead her to me like a lamb to slaughter.” His eyes flutter up to Steve as he breathes, “I took her. Not the demon. I woke to her in my arms, desperate and soft, and I—“ 

Steve can’t breathe.

“I was the first to take her.” He releases the truth like a wind that suddenly rushes forth, a dam broken. His voice breaks, too, “She was so sweet, Steve—“

Steve inhales sharply, settles back, surprised and unsure. His mind whirls, body flushing with heat and something it shouldn’t. Guilt then, for anything other than repulsion. He shouldn’t be curious, shouldn’t want to hear Bucky’s rough, low voice tell him about what you two did when the moon was high and the only witness. He shouldn’t want to know, he shouldn’t think of you and Wanda and you soft, curving bodies; your desperate groans and hungry, seeking lips. 

He shouldn’t think about the way his chest had touched Bucky’s, how his heart had beaten a new tune. A damned song. He exhales harshly, and bitterly, wishes he knew how sweet you were, too.

Bucky is sick for three days and three nights as he tries to purge the demon from him, the soldier of a devil. His eyes will roll into winter black and spew vile, twisting words, or soft, enchanting words. Steve doesn’t leave his side, holds his shaking body when the blue returns. He feeds him and undresses him only to redress him. He bloodlets, cuts a mark to let sizzling blood rush out of Bucky in hopes of purging him. The demon tests Steve, purrs about his desires or hisses his sins. But it’s Bucky’s earnest face, his eyes that water and soften on Steve when they return blue, that really devour all of Steve’s resolve.

Especially when Bucky hides in the crook of his neck, shuddering breaths against his shoulder, holding fast and tight to him as if Steve is the very last thing keeping him tethered to this realm. He holds him when his body seizes, holds him until he doesn’t know what sin is or isn’t anymore. 

* * *

You and Wanda are to be hanged the following day at dawn. 

The court has decided so and when Steve had disappeared for several days, there is no man to defend you. There is no one their pale, blurry faces will listen to besides Steve. Besides, when someone tries to take you from Wanda again, they seize up and are twisted into a strange angle. 

Their bones break like brittle branches under Wanda’s power. She crushes their skull with nothing but her mind; it bursts like a berry and splatters against you both. Against all the grey, slack faces that persecute you. Wanda grows feral and fearsome, she grows anxious and possessive of you. 

And now, you both wait for your deaths. She holds you through the bars as best as she can, stroking your hair. She is strangely calm now, soothed with you near and safe for now. 

Perhaps you should be more fearful; fearful of death, of what may come after for all your sins. 

But you can only settle further into Wanda and wonder who decided it was a sin to love her. To love being touched and to live simple and wild and free. You’d die with your soul spread wide, like a flock of crows, in the least. 

Perhaps, you are also calm because you do not feel death upon you. He is not near you or Wanda. The rats do not scuttle towards you, the insects do not linger. No ravens to caw. 

So you both wait. 

Wait until there is a thump and rushed footsteps against the stones of the prison. You tense, half expecting someone to burst forth and drag you both from your cells kicking and screaming. You worry you were wrong, you worry that you know nothing about death or when he lurks--

Gold light of flame spills forth from the darkness, bursting forth from the corner.

It is Steve who rounds the corner, holding a lantern with a burning flame at its center. Bucky follows after. You and Wanda shift up, your eyes narrowing slightly upon the two. For a terrifying moment you wonder if they’ve been caught, too. Will they swing beside you and Wanda? 

But no-- no, Steve lifts the flaming lantern to see you both. You scuttle away from the light like a creature born of the shadows. 

“Hurry,” Steve says, handing Bucky the jangling keys. “We don’t have much time.” 

Bucky works quickly as you stare in slight astonishment on him, now without the demon that had been clinging to him for so long. However, something remains, something tormented inside of him that will never rest easy. 

When the metal creaks open, you lurch forward, towards Steve. “You’re freeing us?” 

“I promised I would.” Steve responds, honest and simple. 

“What do we do now?” You ask, staring up into his face. 

“We run.” He says with a slight, wry smile at his lips. You want to taste it, you think. You want to tackle him, to crawl into his arms and show you how grateful you are for him. 

“And then?” You breathe.

“I don’t know,” He says, peering into golden, dancing flame of the lantern, but there’s hope traced on the edges. As if maybe there could be something peaceful after all of this, as if maybe you all deserved more than the fires of hell.

But there is no time to talk, there is nothing to be done except become fugitives, spirits stealing away in the night. You walk lightly, Wanda’s small hand in yours, pulling you along the way she always has. You cling to the back of Bucky’s shirt, sometimes he eases you and Wanda in front of him, touches your shoulders and your backs to know that you’re real and still his. 

Steve guides, the lantern in his hand swinging, trying to banish the darkness with the light. He wades into the forest, where he doesn’t know, with his burning flame a bloom against the night. 

The light is obvious, though, and there is a commotion when you are all spotted. 

Shouts, curses, declarations are shouted at you. They ready weapons, ready their hounds, and set them loose upon the four of you. The ugly, open mouths of the towns people try to devour you all. They shout and sway, as if they are possessed with their need to kill you all. 

“Go!” Steve shouts, pushing you and Wanda onward with a rough hand, the light swinging in the darkness like a beacon. 

“Drop the lantern.” You suddenly say, your eyes sparking in the flames with the idea, “Drop the lantern and run!” 

He opens his mouth to question you, to force you onward. But you jolt forward, grab the lantern and knock it from his grasp. It falls from his hands, shatters upon the earth and the flame eagerly leaps out onto the dry, dead grass of the forest. 

Steve jumps out of the way as the smoke begins to curl.

“Let it burn.” You say, grabbing his forearm, trying to pull him along. It takes Bucky shoving at him, before Steve relents and you all take off into the forest like wolves, like foxes being hunted for sport.

The flame grows tall and quick, burning bright and hot against the black, bruised sky. The stars glimmer gold, shine down upon you all as you crash through the forest. The townspeople shout and shriek with the rising flames. 

Wanda laughs suddenly, bright and sharp and wicked and you can’t help but feel a smile creep upon your lips, too. You don’t look back as the fire hungirly eats at the grey bleakness of the town, burns it with blood red and furious orange and rust and the diamond-blue and bright part of the flame that glows like the moon. The town smolders in red now and your lungs burn as you run further from all its atrocities. 

You don’t stop running until the sun peeks through the trees, glowing of gold and robin’s egg blue. You look out at the clearing of a meadow, at the lake that shimmers under the sun, all peach and pearl and honey with the light. 

Your feet are weary, your head heavy and foggy, but Wanda is pressing into your side and Bucky is at your back and you are clinging to Steve’s shirt as you look out at the world.

And finally, you think, with smoke in the distance behind you, the wake of all your destruction, that this new world is filled with color and light you have been hungry for your entire, unforgiving life. 

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi to me on tumblr @until-we-fall-in-love


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